Arrest Warrants

Phil Willis: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many outstanding warrants have been issued for category  (a) A,  (b) B and  (c) C offences to individuals whom the police cannot trace in each police authority in each of the last three years.

Maria Eagle: All failure to appear (FTA) warrants count as outstanding from the moment they are received from the courts until the time they are either executed or withdrawn. The following table sets out the number of outstanding FTA warrants as at 31 March for each of the last three financial years. This information is published on CJSonline.
	Areas have only been required to provide a breakdown of this figure by category A, B and C since the 2007-08 financial year, therefore this information is available for 31 March 2008 only. These data have previously only been made available to practitioners and have not been validated in the same way as the data published on CJSonline.
	It is not possible to tell from centrally collected data how long each of these warrants has been outstanding. However police forces keep outstanding FTA warrants under regular review to ensure that all possible steps are taken to execute these warrants as quickly as possible.
	
		
			   FTA warrants outstanding  Number of FTA warrants outstanding by category as at  31 March 2008 
			  CJS areas  31 March 2006  31 March 2007  31 March 2008  A  B  C 
			 Avon and Somerset 1,347 1,161 918 134 294 490 
			 Bedfordshire 496 508 319 40 128 151 
			 Cambridgeshire 548 438 388 88 147 153 
			 Cheshire 305 311 257 13 179 65 
			 Cleveland 267 225 195 40 95 60 
			 Cumbria l09 105 117 23 68 26 
			 Derbyshire 270 300 257 101 106 50 
			 Devon and Cornwall 430 303 257 70 136 51 
			 Dorset 510 416 318 91 155 72 
			 County Durham and Darlington 159 149 120 4 80 36 
			 Dyfed-Powys 177 143 127 10 59 58 
			 Essex 915 995 799 84 384 331 
			 Gloucestershire 245 200 166 26 97 43 
			 Greater Manchester 3,671 2,475 1,835 170 608 1,057 
			 Gwent 282 243 181 28 60 93 
			 Hampshire and Isle of Wight 926 788 641 69 412 160 
			 Hertfordshire 427 364 343 41 196 106 
			 Humberside 312 244 214 19 75 120 
			 Kent 759 675 557 79 279 199 
			 Lancashire 988 896 749 72 335 342 
			 Leicestershire 886 659 513 93 207 213 
			 Lincolnshire 783 718 552 126 136 290 
			 London 9,779 7,278 6,040 1,149 3,650 1,241 
			 Merseyside 1,730 1,109 784 222 316 246 
			 Norfolk 387 425 275 16 101 158 
			 North Wales 213 143 128 28 83 17 
			 North Yorkshire 213 147 129 38 39 52 
			 Northamptonshire 266 258 244 19 192 33 
			 Northumbria 740 685 576 56 270 250 
			 Nottinghamshire 624 598 510 120 253 137 
			 South Wales 911 1,018 890 91 303 496 
			 South Yorkshire 691 432 373 n/a n/a n/a 
			 Staffordshire 552 489 327 40 240 47 
			 Suffolk 527 424 373 48 140 142 
			 Surrey 260 250 223 33 158 32 
			 Sussex 734 639 556 106 351 99 
			 Thames Valley 1,811 1,462 1,204 126 646 432 
			 Warwickshire 154 147 159 38 81 40 
			 West Mercia 577 546 354 39 214 101 
			 West Midlands 1,828 1,545 1,091 202 507 382 
			 West Yorkshire 992 802 886 225 357 304 
			 Wiltshire 138 166 137 2 117 18